10/24/2009: "Bringing Home Baby"

Ok. Not a baby. He's eight. But might as well be a baby since he will be our first. As in Child. Yup.

We are going to China at the end of the month to bring him home. We've been in the process since 2006, and while we are waiting for a baby girl, we decided to bring home a big brother first.

We had originally identified a cute 6 year old boy who had a cleft lip, cleft palate, and VSD (a hole in his heart) all of which was supposedly repaired. China rejected us based on the fact that we were 10 months short of the 5 year marriage requirement(after telling us that we would be approved). They asked if we wanted them to hold onto him but we told them to go ahead and find another family for him. We didn't want to make him wait for a family. And the longer you have a child in an institution, the more dicey things are in terms of development delays, mental issues, social delays, etc.

Fast forward a year. And it turns out that the orphanage contacted our agency and told them that they had "held him for us." And after much of this and a little of that, it finally is happening and, well, we are bringing him home.

Kinda weird. I haven't had time to anticipate it much. All that waiting and then we were told the date of travel, it was all a bit anti-climatic. And for us, I think that keeping busy with work had a lot to do with not obsessing over every little second that went by. Joseph and I lead a full, rich life so sitting by idly and waiting for something to happen is just not in our genes.

So, we did things while we waited. And when they say you are never ready, they are right.

And this is a brief note to say that we are going to China and we will bring our son home.